Saturday, September 24, 2016

Cassie's Journal - September 23, 2016

This has been one of those crazy-busy days
with a lot of awesome that went along with the work.There were a lot of highlights for me, and I
don’t want to miss anything; so let’s try to keep this report in order –
starting with my Tai Chi wake-up call.

I needed that wake-up call; and Ehlana
delivered that to me while Ethan took Silkie outside.A bit of self-healing was needed too while I
got ready for our morning workout; and then I was good to go for the day – and as
fired up as my brother, sister, and their dog all were.Mom was in a good mood too; though that had
more to do with knowing that Dad would be home again tonight than anything
else.We all miss him when he’s away;
but it is toughest on Mom – even when she gets to go to Crystal Springs for a
mid-week sleepover!

Tai Chi by the river was good; Michael
joined us for breakfast; and then he needed to hurry off to his weight training
at the school while I took care of the clean-up before taking my turn to get
ready for school.Ehlana, Ethan, and I
met up with Rowen, Naomi, and Aiden for the walk to school, and while I’m
thinking about that; let’s take a little side trip to mention Patrick.He doesn’t get written about here very often
anymore now that he’s gone and gotten his own life; and that’s why I’m thinking
about him now.He hasn’t been walking to
school with Rowen for a long time anyway, but that’s now because he’s walking
there with Jessica Bassett instead of his buddies – though they do all walk
together when the timing works for them.I also haven’t mentioned Jessica much, and I actually do see her quite a
bit through the marching band and around school.We haven’t done anything with her through
Michael’s family, and I’m not doing any saxophone lessons right now; but
Michael still finds time to do lessons with her now and then; and we both work
with her during band practices.Patrick
and Jessica are a really cute couple, and while he’d hate that description; it’s
true all the same.

Moving along, my school day wasn’t very
exciting while we were in classes, but we had fun at lunchtime; and I got out
of classes early to do some work for the band that was partially
fundraiser-related and party work that needed to be done to get ready for a big
home game.That kept me busy after
school for a while too; so I didn’t have a lot of time after that to go home,
have an early dinner, and get ready for the game before I needed to be back at
the school for a pre-game warm-up with the band.I missed out on the barbeque part of the
family dinner and a football game night, but Dad missed that – and part of the
game – too; and I did get to have some fun with them during the game.Having my own cheerleading section while
working with the squad or band was pretty good too – including a very
entertaining cameo moment when Aunt Leanne had Ehlana, Naomi, Leah, Brianna,
and a few other girls attempt to follow our sideline cheers while lined up
about half-way between where we were standing and the bleachers.

We had a lot to cheer about during the
game; and all of the guys seemed to be especially fired up tonight.That wasn’t good for Winfield Farms; and the
outcome of the game wasn’t really in any doubt pretty much from the
kick-off.I wouldn’t dream of saying
anything bad about any of the other football teams, and Winfield Farms played
hard all night; but our team is just really, really good this season.Michael and Tim are a big part of the reasons
for that; and they both played great tonight.They had two touchdowns each in the first half, and while Coach Robinson
put the run game in play after that for the rest of the game, Michael also had
five defensive interceptions; Tim had three of them; and they ran the Winfield
Farms’ defense ragged trying to keep up with them – even when it was obvious
that we were holding back to avoid running up the score.Lucas had one of his two touchdowns in the
first half too, so we needed to do that because we were already ahead by
thirty-five to nine by half time.Sure,
that doesn’t sound like a big lead; but it could have been worse by then – and much
worse if we’d played full-out all night.

That brings us to the half-time show; and
the Winfield Farms cheerleaders were happy to help us out with making that go
fairly smoothly – though that helped the football players more than the
cheerleaders this time.The Winfield
Farms squad went first; that gave the guys time to get out of football gear and
into band uniforms; we did our marching band show after that; and then there
was a short break before Jenny led our squad out for our kid-rated half-time
routine.Rowen and I blatantly stole the
Disney princesses theme from a YouTube video we like; though our music montage
was our own creation; and we only went with eight princesses – mostly because
we would have had a tough time doing costume changes in the middle of the
field.

Please don’t go there; though I’m sure that
at least some of the teen guys at the game would have enjoyed that kind of
behind-the-scenes entertainment! ;^)

I’m not going to drag out the half-time
news, but I do want to add that it is a lot more fun for me to play with my
friends while having my family and neighbors around to entertain – and to share
the adventure with them.The second-half
of the game wasn’t boring without all of the touchdowns; though I’ll admit that
I do like watching my boyfriend score touchdowns more than when our team is
holding back to avoid running up the score.Lucas scored his second touchdown on our first possession of the second
half; and then it was all field goals after that – for both teams.We had five of them; and Winfield Farms had
two more; so the final score was fifty-seven to fifteen.I’m sure that the Winfield Farms players,
coaches, and fans are disappointed with the loss, but I’ll also add that they
seem to be a really nice group of guys; and the rivalry tonight was very
friendly – even when the guys were happily pounding on each other.

Being at home meant that we could spend
some time with our families and friends after the game; and we had perfect
weather for that as the temperatures cooled off from the highs that nearly
reached one hundred by mid-afternoon.Not having a long bus ride also meant that we could have a post-game
party once we finished packing up from the game and getting cleaned up and
changed.Since our Captain lives on a
farm, heading out there after the games won’t really work out for us; so Tim
hosted the party tonight.I should say
that his parents did; since they did a lot of the work for it before we even arrived;
so they deserve most of the credit.They
also set a time limit of one-ish for the party to wrap up, and that would sound
way too early for most teens our age, but we have a lot of farm kids in our
group; and most of them are still busy in their spare time helping with various
crop harvests; so partying all night and then getting up to help with the work
isn’t a good idea – especially when you’re operating big farm equipment.

Michael and I aren’t doing that in the
morning, but we are working the breakfast shift at the Inn; so we ended up
leaving early.The farm kids might work
harder; but we’ll be at the Inn earlier.That early departure also meant that I could help Michael out with some
Magi-powered healing before we got around to the good night hugs and kisses in
the living room at my house; and he really needed the help.The Winfield Farms players might not have
been able to stop him, but Michael did take a lot of hits; and was seriously
bruised up by the time I healed him. I’m
glad that I can help him out with that, but if the other guys on the team ever
find out; they might collectively decide to lynch him.

That’s not a suggestion for any of the guys
reading this in my future; so don’t even think about it!

Mom, Dad, and the twins were all sleeping
by the time I got home, so I’ll have to hear Dad’s work week in the city recap
sometime tomorrow; though I did at least get to welcome him home at the game
before he came home and crashed for the night.I did stop in for kisses with Ethan and Ehlana on my way up to bed, but
they didn’t wake up; and I didn’t stay long with either of them.My day wasn’t quite done yet, but while I’d
hoped to be able to skip doing any work; a small family business issue came up
that I needed to deal with sooner instead of later.That took a half hour or so; there were a few
email for me to deal with after that; and then I did a Hathorne systems check
because I haven’t done that in a while and wanted to get caught up on the
latest news from my favorite Dark Magi.Okay, ‘favorite’ isn’t the right word for them; but you know what I
mean.There is never any good news from
Hathorne Industries, but we do always find new opportunities to thwart their
worldwide efforts to exploit and pillage; and I found out a few things that we
can do something about – along with others that we can’t help with at all.I never like finding out about those things,
but I could say that about every bad thing that happens in the world that we
can’t stop.

This isn’t a good time to go off on a rant
about that; though it is sometimes very hard to be a Magi Master and know that
I’m still so limited with what I can do even with my extraordinary
abilities.That’s hardly a feeling that’s
unique to me, since I expect that most people with an ounce of compassion in
them wish they could do more than they’re able to do to fix all of the problems
in our world – or even just a few of them.Unfortunately for all of us, there will always be bad people willing to
keep messing things up for the rest of us.

Yes, that will be true after the Ascension
of the Light too, so while we will have a better world to live in; don’t expect
an eternal Utopia.It isn’t all evil and
madness during a Dark Ascension either – a fact that we know for sure from the
archives written during past periods of darkness.

My thoughts are obviously wandering off to
places I don’t need to go when I need to be sleeping instead of pondering
weighty issues past, present, or future.My go-to-work wake-up call is going to be arriving too soon, and since I
really don’t have any other news to add to this update; it’s time to wrap it up
and get started on my nap time.I’ll
take all of the happy from today with me into dreamland; forget about my
responsibilities for a little while; and then I’ll hopefully be ready to get
back to the real world again in the morning.